Lover lands in prison for murder plot

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It was a case of forbidden love that nearly cost a young man life behind bars.

Instead, the ill-fated plan of a man apparently so love-struck by an underage girl that he plotted to kill her mother after she tried to break them up landed him a 10-year prison sentence for attempted murder.

Angel Euceda, 22, was sentenced in San Francisco Superior Court on Monday after pleading guilty to stabbing the mother on Dec. 16, 2010, in this real-life version of “Romeo and Juliet.”

Euceda, then 20, hid in his 14-year-old girlfriend’s bedroom closet at her mother’s Richmond district home for two hours, prosecutors said, until the mother discovered him and he attacked her with a kitchen knife. His girlfriend had run to a neighbor’s house beforehand, prosecutors said.

Though the stabbing was botched, Euceda was still charged with attempted murder and conspiracy based on his statement to police that he tried to kill the mother, Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai said.

After beginning the attack, Euceda said he “couldn’t handle it anymore,” dropped the knife and ran out of the house, Talai said.

The mother was cut in the stomach, but not seriously injured. The conniving couple planned to meet up at Baker Beach that night, but police found Euceda first.

Euceda’s attorney, Brian Petersen, said there was evidence of “significant pressure” by Euceda’s girlfriend to get Euceda to kill her mother, but facing a possible life sentence at trial, Euceda accepted the plea deal.

Petersen called it a “Romeo and Juliet case … motivated by stupid young love.”